Borescope technology has been applied to the medical field for many years. For example, laparoscopy and endoscopy both involve a medical professional inserting a borescope into a patient. The borescope allows the medical practitioner to view the patient's internal organs without having to expose the organs to the open air through surgery.
In a conventional laparoscopic system, a laparoscope, comprising a rod lens tube and a handle body, connects to a processing stack, which is used to process image data received from a laparoscope. The rod lens tube is the portion of the laparoscope that is inserted into a patient's abdominal cavity. A high intensity light is introduced into the lens and illuminates the tissue. Light reflected off the surfaces of the tissue is transmitted back up the rod lens into a camera, which captures an image that is transmitted through a wire to image processing equipment in the equipment stack.
As described above conventional laparoscopic systems suffer from several shortcomings. For example, laparoscopic systems require large stacks of equipment to generate the light and process the video image. The light is typically a high intensity xenon light source that is delivered to the laparoscope through a fiber optic cable. The fiber optic cable is fragile and gets in the way of the medical practitioners. In addition, the high intensity light sources can be extremely hot, even burning patients or starting patient covering drapes on fire if improperly monitored. In addition, the light source can vary in color or intensity from one setup to the next or over time, thereby requiring frequent white balancing. Additionally, the rod lenses are fragile, which limits their use in certain conditions and/or necessitates costly repairs or replacement. Indeed, an entire secondary industry has developed that focuses on repairing broken rod lens tubes.